Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/67



A better prospect, however, greeted us behind the town. A beautiful valley lay there, nestling between the cliffs, and rich in Arctic vegetation. It was covered with a thick turf of moss and grasses, among which the Poa Arctica, Glyceria Arctica, and ''Alopecurus Alpinus'' were most abundant. In places it was, indeed, a perfect marsh. Little streams of melted snow meandered through it, gurgling among the stones, or dashing wildly over the rocks. Myriads of little golden petaled poppies (Papaver nudicaule) fluttered over the green. The dandelion (Leontodon palustre), close kindred of the wild flower so well known at home, kept it company; the buttercup (Ranunculus nivalis), with its smiling, well-remembered face, was sometimes seen; and the less familiar Potentilla and the purple Pedicularis were dotted about here and there. The saxifrages, purple, white, and yellow, were also very numerous. I captured not less than seven varieties. The birch and crowberry, and the beautiful Andromeda, the heather of Greenland, grew matted together in a sheltered nook among the rocks; and, in strange mimicry of Southern richness, the willows feebly struggled for existence on the spongy turf. With my cap I covered a whole forest of them.

I had been in Pröven in 1853, and the place had not changed in the interval. The old ex-trader Christiansen was there, a little older, but not less frugal than before. He complained bitterly of Dr. Kane not having kept his promises to him, and I endeavored to mollify his wrath by assuring him that Dr. Kane had lost his vessel and could not return; but his life had been made unhappy during seven long years by visions of a barrel of American flour, and he would not be comforted. He was scarcely able to